Finally, I have moved to LA

Z

Zach Lien

BAMF
hey guys, i made it, after driving from philadelphia. Let me tell you, kansas is the most boring state in the WORLD, and if you happen to pass a sign that reads "worlds largest prairie dog," dont believe it, its a cement sculpture, and I wasted 7 bucks to see it. Anyway, I'm here in LA, and it would be cool to meet some people, maybe work on something or help someone out. I don't start school until the 25th, and i'm a bit bored. word

-Zach
 
Did you see any of these?

jackalope4.jpg
 
thanks elvis. i took 70 W pretty much the whole time. It was incredibly boring until Colorado.

to elvis: I have the DVX100a. I have done a few shorts, shot a few live bands, nothing major. My strong point right now is writing
 
I took 15- most of the tail end from colorado was at night- but somewhere in nevada (i think) i drove through a canyon at night- BEAUTIFUL.
 
What a drive huh?

welcome to the golden state - where we don't care about football as much, and it's incredibly expensive to do anything, but the weather can't be beat.
 
FYI - Nebraska is far, far worse than Kansas. If you ever have to drive across it, do it at night.

Welcome to the big bear.
 
Larry R said:
Did you see any of these?

jackalope4.jpg
Click to expand...
ha! that's good! welcome Zach remember to give yourself two years before everything starts to jell. it's always hard in the beginning. remember to read the parking signs carefully so you don't get tickets. they're different in every city within the city;hollywood, n. hollywood,glendale, beverly hills, culver city,santa monica,malibu, mar vista,venice, pacific palisades and so on. for instance no parking on monday between 1pm-3pm street cleaning no parking between 4pm-7pm every day(rush hour traffic). permit parking only from 8pm-6pm. man it gets even more confusing in some parts! this is just an example, they're all different.:Drogar-Mark-07(DBG) :Drogar-Mark-04(DBG) :Drogar-Mark-07(DBG) :Drogar-Mark-04(DBG) :crybaby:
 
Good advice... I've now made it two years without a parking ticket, which is a new record! Took a while to get to that insane level of skillz, though.
 
Welcome to the jungle!

Zach, pay attention to the parking police in LA. They do NOT F' around. Ever! Do not learn the hard way. Here is a story about how much I hate the LA parking police. It was posted on my myspace. Now, I post it for you...

So what am I going to write about today? Victory. "Victory" you say? Yes, I say, victory! For those of you who've been keeping score, the evil government subsidary that calls itself the "Department of Motor Vehicles" and I, have been in a war. This war has gone on for many centuries, but only since my birth has it reached the heights that it has. You see, we people of the "fair" world, like to do things that normal people like to do. Like, hmmm, PARK. And drive. And sometimes turn our windshield wipers on. But the evil Department of Motor Vehicles (I will call them DMV) doesn't want us to do these things unless we pay them lots and lots of money. 1 minute over on your parking meter. $45 bucks. Don't get the ticket in within a week. Tack on another $40. Get 5 tickets. Get the boot. Get the boot? Pay $300 to get the boot off. Don't pay to get the boot off? Car gets impounded. Don't pay to get the car out or for the boot? That's another $800. Wait too long, car is sold in auction.

All of this is particularly ridiculous when you come to LA with a car that's WORTH A THOUSAND DOLLARS! The amount of expenses you're paying just for doing simple things like driving around cost more than the car itself!

So why am I telling you all this? Because I won. I beat them. It took me a long time and a lot of pointless trips to the DMV, but I finally beat them. I believe I am the only such person to do so. And my hope is that upon telling this story, that others will see the holes, and that they too will circumvent them and that together we can someday bring the DMV down, and expose them for theircorrupt fee-penalizing ways.

I came to LA with a shitty car, one that my dad offered me under the pretense, "Uh, I think it'll get to California" . When I came here, I did the right thing, which was to register my car. I went in, registered, and they told me they'd send me the plates in a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks passed. No plates. I forgot about it and went on with my life. A few months later I went back in, asked for the plates again. They said sorry, our fault, and that they'd send them out. They never did. I figured these guys were morons and forgot about them.

A few years passed and I began to rack up the obligatory parking tickets. You know, car tire was more than 6 inches from the curb, car was parked slightly crooked in parking garage, parking meter ticket when the parking meter was broken. Unfair tickets. So what did I do? I didn't pay them.

Then one day a cop stopped me for not having California plates. I told him my story, that they were supposed to send them to me. But he could give two shits. He said the next time I was stopped without plates, I'd be arrested (arrested?? Where am I living? 1982 Russia?). This began the plight for which my hatred for the DMV began. Like a few bubbles in a newborn pond, my anger was born.

I went in to finally get my plates, but they didn't know what I was talking about. "Plates? What plates? You had plates?"

CHRIS
Yeah, I registered my car when I first got here.

STUPID DMV LADY
Do you have a receipt?

CHRIS
There was no receipt cause you guys never finsihed your job. You said you'd send it out to me.

STUPID DMV LADY
That sounds awful suspicious.

CHRIS
You mean "awfully".

STUPID DMV LADY
What you say?

CHRIS
I said, "you mean 'awfully'". You said 'awful'

STUPID DMV LADY
What you, some sort of English professor n ****?

I chalked this up to the average I.Q. of someone who works at the DMV being somewhere around 7 and asked for a supervisor. The supervisor explained to me that she didn't know where my plates were either. That, in fact, they didn't have any record of me registering at all. I explained to them that I was told by the cops that if I didn't get my car registered I was going to jail for ten years but this didn't seem to motivate them. In fact the supervisor asked the other woman if she wanted a "powdered donut". Adding another 3 pounds to this woman's already donut-sized body was more important than me hoping the soap didn't get dropped in Pee Wee's Jailhouse.

After eating about five more donuts and having a conversation completely unrelated to my problem, they explained to me that in order to re-register, they would need the Illinois registration. Not only would this cost another $700 dollars, but they were going to charge me fees for NOT having registered right when I got into California, something I had done. This would cost another $500.

CHRIS
But I already registered.

DMV WOMAN
(mouth full of donut)
I don't see no registration.

CHRIS
No, you see, I told you. I registered. But you guys never sent me the stuff.

DMV WOMAN
Umm-hmm, and I'm the president of the United States.

I was about to tell her that she couldn't be the president of the United States because the president of the United States was about the size of one of her legs. But instead I went to my car and looked for the registration. Under the law that whenever you really need to find something in life, it disappears, the registration was nowhere to be found. Not only that, but I couldn't even find my original bill of sale, something that the second donut lady had said would work as well. Not good. I went back in to tell the powdered sugar twins the news and they said "Well, there's nothing we can do." 45 minutes later I got their supervisor, a 4 foot 3 inch asian woman, who informed me that the only thing I could do was get proof from the orignal dealership that I had bought the car.

This had gone from bad to worse. In order to get that number, I would need to call my dad and ask for it. And if I did that, my dad would tell my mom, and she would call to leave a 45 minute message about how I was ruining my life.

LIKELY MOM MESSAGE
Chris... I heard you're having problems with your car out there. What's wrong with your car? Is there something wrong with your car? Why is there something wrong with your car? You know people your age shouldn't be having problems with their car. You should have your own car anyway. Not one that your father gave you. You know most people your age are married and have a real job. What are you doing? Chris? Hello? (my mom often forgets, when she's leaving a message, that she's not talking to me). Chris?? (off-phone) Tony (dad), Chris has disappeared. He was just on the phone a second ago.

DAD IN BACKGROUND
You're leaving a message dear.

MOM
Oh. well... this wouldn't happen if he had a real job.

My mom then tries to hang up but misses, and I listen to 14 more minutes of her wondering to my dad if I'm gay.

Anyway, I bit the bullet and called my dad, who found the number 3 days later, and I called the dealership only to find out that they NO LONGER EXISTED. And not only that, the guy who had sold my dad the car was dead. Apparently he had a heart attack selling a car. I quietly wondered what kind of car it was. A jeep? A sedan? Um, okay... Now what do I do? Maybe I could tell my story to the DMV and they would understand (yeah right). So I went back to the DMV later that week. The greatest thing in the world about the DMV is they have this rotating worker cycle where the same people aren't allowed to work there more than once a month. This means I had a largess African American lady with breasts the size of billy goats that I had to start my whole story over with. And you know how that goes. You can't go from A-G to someone who works at the DMV. You have to go through the entire process again, following all the orders they give you. "Well then you have to call the original dealership and ask for proof of sale." I then have to have a pretend conversation with a dead man and act like he's out of business. Anyway, five hours and twelve donuts later (I think the DMV is secretly a front for Winchell's donuts - more on that in another blog) I was told that they couldn't help me.

So I had a problem. Did I keep on driving and risk getting arrested and hope dearly that the soap didn't drop while I was in the shower? Or did I stop driving my car? I kept driving. The more I thought about it, did 'drop the soap' really exist?? It was probably just an old wive's tale. I told myself this every day before I got into my car. A car that was quickly dying.

So as I played chicken with the bunghole police, I continued to rack up all sorts of new fun parking tickets, which I, under protest of course, refused to pay. The funny thing was, I kept avoiding the boot. Either the parking flashlight cops forgot their boot that day, or they had just used it on someone else. Whatever the reason, I kept avoiding it. The boot is supposed to come after 5 unpaid tickets. I had at least FIFTEEN tickets, totalling somewhere around $700. I began to think that I was some sort of parking deity. A god. Immune from the almighty boot. But the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became. They were up to something. And I wanted to find out what.

In the meantime, my old car started breaking down every other week. It became completely unreliable to the point where, if I was going to drive more than 8 blocks, I had to ask myself "are you okay with walking back from there?"

Well, a few years later my parents finally agreed to help me buy a new car. This was amazing. I would be able to have a LEGITMATE car in LA. The nightmares about jail cells and killer bunghole plungers stopped. But I started having new nightmares. I knew that I would now have to pay my parking tickets. That they wouldn't let me register my new car until I took care of all of the fees on my old one. I checked. 23 tickets. I did not want to do the math on that.

Once I got my new car, I had to find a place to park my old car since I only had one parking space in the garage. This meant moving my old car onto the street. As soon as I did this, my car, which was literally worth about $1 at this point, died. It was officially dead. Would not start. Even the AAA guy looked at me, shook his head, did the secret jesus mary of joseph cross over his chest and said "Sorry essay, she gone." This brought me to a new reality. HOw the **** was I going to get rid of it? No one was going to buy the thing. The scrap place wouldn't touch it since, without registration, they assumed I stole it. And so it just sat there. And week after week, collected tickets during street cleaning days. Every week, new ticket. More money owed. WHAT THE ****? Why weren't they applying the boot and towing my car away?

This is when their devious plan struck me. The reason they weren't booting my car was because they had done reconnaisance (you may think this is crazy, but I swear I've seen people in parking uniforms scanning streets from building tops with binoculars -- okay, I haven't, but I'm 92% sure that it happens). They KNEW my car was dead. So instead of just booting it, they let it accrue a new ticket every week so they could suck more money out of me. This went on for 7 weeks! At this point my tickets collectively were somewhere in the vicinity of $1750. Once they put the boot on, that would be another $300. Once they towed it away to impound it, they'd charge me another $200 for the tow. AND they would charge me fees for having a car in Los Angeles for 7 years without registration. Which, according to the information that my donut-scarfing large female friends at the DMV gave me, was probably going to be somewhere in the $3000 range. Which meant that I was going to have to pay about $5250 just to get RID of my car!!!

So I considered doing what most people in my situation would do. Kill myself. But for some reason I had a strange craving for donuts, ate a dozen, and passed out. The next morning I felt suicide was not the answer. I had to see this through. I had to sue them, combat them, trick them, become parking police myself and infliterate their system, do SOMETHING to them. I couldn't give up. I couldn't surrender! FREEEEEDOOOMMMMMMM!!!!

3 weeks later, they finally booted my car. And about 3 weeks after that (a time in which they still ticketed me for not moving my car during street cleaning) they towed it away. I could only imagine how happy they were. The ****ing Czar of the DMV, taking in this vehicle that he knew he would make millions over, MILLIONS, just like he had done to so many other poor souls in the past who wanted to do these ridiculously hideous things in his city like... drive.

So imagine my surprise when I went to the DMV to register my car with about $17.83 cents in my pocket. A full $5000 short of what I knew they would ask for. Beginning what I knew would be another unregistered car, one that would rack up its own set of late fees. More money I would owe. Oh my god. What if I could never drive again?

But...

They didn't have me on file. Those stupid ****ers, because they wouldn't do a simple thing like REGISTER my ****ing car, never had me on file! All of those tickets... didn't matter! They'd get nothing for them. All because of their own stupidity. I was free of every single charge accrued from that car from the day it entered Los Angeles to this very moment and they couldn't do ANYTHING about it.

Their plot had FAILED!

I won. I beat the system. I went and did a huge dance outside the Culver City DMV (in which a few homeless men joined me - one of which said we should hang out sometime - I gave him my number - he said we should play 'drop the soap'). And I won. Not a single penny was given to them. That car was their responsibility. They were going to have to ship it somewhere to get destroyed. AT THEIR COST. To this day, I can see them in their desks, trying to figure out how this happened, how someone had gotten away with not paying 34 parking tickets. There would be meetings. Heads would roll! AH AHAHAHAHHA

AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAAHAHHA

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

I WINNNNNNNN YOU BASTARDS!
 
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